It has now been a common practice for television (TV) viewers to receive video contents at their tuners via digital broadcasting, such as, terrestrial, satellite or cable TV broadcasting and to record and store the contents in their DVD (Digital Versatile Disks)-RAMs (Random Access Memories) HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) or the like at home.
With an increase in storage capacity of DVD-RAM media and HDD recorders, the contents stored in these storages have been increased in volume. This causes users to hardly search large number of contents stored in these storage media for their desired ones.
Part of the video contents stored in a storage can be read out as images and displayed as thumbnails to allow the user to easily search the contents. There is, for example, known a technique that displays as thumbnails a plurality of images contained in a video content stored in an HDD, memorizes positions of the thumbnails in the video content, and sequentially plays back a predetermined time length of image data from each thumbnail position in response to a user request for replaying a digest file. This technique is disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-289486.
However, the conventional technique, which allows a user to select a video content by viewing thumbnail images, has a certain limit on facilitating the user selection of a content. Only cutting out one scene from the video content as a still image to thumbnail the same is not sufficient to precisely convey the program feature of the video content to the user.
A user who views a thumbnailed image cut out from VTR (Video Tape Recorder) images shot on location broadcasted within a variety program may mistakenly find the program as a travel one. Further, a user who views a thumbnailed CM (Commercial Message) program cut out from a program cannot find what the program actually is.
To begin with, thumbnailing only one scene of a video content hardly conveys the precise mood of the program to the user. The user may mistakenly select a video content different in mood from what the user intended to view with the thumbnailed image as a guide.
The issue that users hardly or mistakenly select video contents has increased a burden onto the users with an increase in the storage capacities. This issue is also critical in a VOD (Video-On-Demand) system, which delivers a large volume of contents stored at a TV station in response to requests from users.